Who's Having Lunch With Clarence Thomas?
Here's to the justices who lunch.
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
It’s all lollipops and sunshine down at the Supreme Court following Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory. Sir Samuel of Blackacre won’t have to dust off his insurrection flags! Ginni Thomas won’t have to pay text overage fees pestering Mark Meadows with conspiracy theories! And Brett Kavanaugh can point at Matt Gaetz!
It’s the result that the conservatives on the Supreme Court went to considerable lengths to make happen from retroactively erasing part of the Fourteenth Amendment to inventing a brand new theory of immunity to functionally shield presidents from non-presidential acts — like refusing to turn over classified documents as a private citizen or paying hush money to a porn star.
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Time to celebrate, gang!
One justice might be doing a little celebrating as we speak. We’re hearing that Clarence Thomas might be taking a break from vacation planning today to have a private lunch with right-wing gadfly Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro would seem an odd dining companion for a Supreme Court justice. Maybe Thomas needed some Thanksgiving tips from the absolute worst chef of all time:
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That’s from a video where Shapiro awkwardly attempts to make a turkey while hawking earbuds. Remember back in the 60s when William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater did a cooking segment? Me neither.
The right-wing media environment is self-parody at this point, making it all the more terrifying that it holds more sway over the Court’s conservatives than ever before. Last Term, we heard some bizarre questions that only made sense from the perspective of one entirely ensconced in that echo chamber. Under these circumstances, it would be disturbing if not surprising for a justice to have a fanboy meal — not sure which is the fanboy in this scenario — with a fixture from that world.
Look, justices can eat with whoever they want. Preferably it’s not someone with pending business before the Court, but Alito has already proven there’s nothing stopping the justices from doing that either. Shapiro doesn’t raise any apparent conflict of interest, he’s just a right-wing shitposter. But with trust in the Supreme Court at historic lows, one would expect the justices might want to be more cautious about nakedly ideological meetings. It’s one thing to sit down with a right-wing law professor or go on a junket with a Biglaw partner and write it all off as a legal conversation. It’s quite another to have dinner with Catturd.
Yes, for those keeping score, Ben Shapiro falls somewhere between Catturd and Jonathan Turley. And that’s not as wide a gap as you might think.
But it also wouldn’t be surprising if famous figures in the conservative ecosphere, not unlike Shapiro, might start meeting with Thomas as part of a charm offensive to convince the justice to get out of the way. While Shapiro is very much on the record that seniors should never retire and toil until they die, that presumably doesn’t apply to someone whose continued service might someday backfire and accidentally restore rights to women or something. Hoping to avoid a Ruth Bader Ginsburg redux, expect Republicans to turn up the volume on their senior pet justices in order to replace them with younger judges to consolidate unaccountable power for another generation. Though if they want Thomas out of his seat, they’d best figure out how to get the man paid because retired justices don’t get free vacations!
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So if Shapiro met with Thomas today, expect this to be the start of a string of conservatives meeting with the justice to keep him on track to retire soon.
One presumes these guests will be picking up the checks.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
